2014 Home – Going ‘home’

28 times. Or is it 30? I guess you sorta lose count after the 15th time. It’s the curse of the ex-pat – flying back and forth between your birth country and your adopted country. And so it goes that this is either my 28th or 30th trip over the Pacific Ocean. I’ve done this trip so many times now that I no longer get excited or nervous – it just feels like a really long commute between ‘home’ and ‘past home’. Read more

2014 Home – The final visit

Bicycle touring in the Midwest and Plains states of America takes you through many small towns and cities that have struggled to survive the transition from an agriculture or manufacturing economy to a service-based economy with cheap petrol and people willing to travel to nearby towns for work and consumer goods. I call these dying towns ‘places people are from’. When you meet people on the road, they don’t say “I live in XXXX” or “I’m moving to XXXX”. Those dead little towns are places from which people escape. Read more